Transport Quebec to tighten selection process

Kevin Dougherty, Gazette Quebec bufeau chief01.29.2013

“As soon we learn something, we act — and that is what we did yesterday,” Transport minister Sylvain Gaudreault said Wednesday following revelations of illegal inducements at the Charbonneau Commission.

After using every euphemism in the book, Michel Lalonde finally admitted what what he did could, in fact, be summed up in one word: theft.

QUEBEC — Transport Minister Sylvain Gaudreault has ordered a re-evaluation of the process of selecting members for committees that evaluate bids on department infrastructure contracts.

“As soon we learn something, we act — and that is what we did yesterday,” Gaudreault told reporters Wednesday, referring to the revelation in testimony at the Charbonneau Commission that one selection committee member had accepted a $25,000 payment, as well as a free cellphone and free cellphone service, a $1,500 espresso machine and other gifts, in return for bidding information.

Michel Lalonde, head of the engineering firm Génius Conseil (formerly Groupe Séguin), told the corruption inquiry he gave Claude Millaire, who sat on more than one contract selection committee from 2004 to 2011, a sum of $25,000 after a consortium including his firm won a $3-million contract for work on Highway 13.

Millaire was a friend of Gilles Thibodeau, a member of the Génius board who initiated the payments to Millaire, Lalonde testified.

On Wednesday, Gaudreault said Millaire, who is retired from Quebec’s Health Department but was later named to selection committees, ended his association with the Transport Department in late 2011.

Gaudreault said he is working with deputy minister Dominique Savoie, who was named top official in the Transport Department in 2011, to improve the process for choosing members of the selection committees.

“Yesterday, when we heard this at the Charbonneau Commission, I asked my deputy minister to propose ways to tighten up the rules for selection committees, and I can tell you one right away,” the minister said.

“From now on, members of a selection committee will have to sign a declaration of interests,” Gaudreault explained. “They will have to declare their interests, the links they have. It will be a declaration that will form part of the record of the selection committees.”

As well, no longer will the same people have permanent membership on selection committees.

“It can’t always be the same ones who return from the same section,” he said, adding that committee members must be from different divisions of the Transport Department, with differing qualifications.

The committees should include people with experience in construction or engineering, as well as people from outside Transport Quebec, Gaudreault said.

Asked how Millaire, with no engineering expertise and a history in the Health Department, was named to selection committees, Gaudreault said he wasn’t aware.

“Was he (Millaire) someone who was responsible for buildings? I don’t know.”

Gaudreault pointed out that one of the first acts of the new Parti Québécois government was Bill 2, reducing the maximum amount a Quebec voter may give to a political party from $1,000 to $100 a year. Companies, unions and people who are not Quebec voters cannot legally contribute to a Quebec political party.

But Lalonde told the Charbonneau Commission that he, his family and business associates contributed a total of $240,000 to Quebec’s three main parties.

An Elections Quebec document introduced into evidence indicates that between 1996 and 2010, Lalonde’s company gave approximately $117,000 to the PQ, $94,000 to the Quebec Liberals and $29,000 to the Action démocratique du Québec, since merged into François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec.

Legault said this week that when he took over the ADQ it was $500,000 in debt, so he has no plans to pay back the illegal contribution money.

Gaudreault said the PQ is prepared to reimburse the money contributed by Lalonde’s company “if it can be shown it was contributed by companies borrowing the names of legitimate voters.”

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